We have a list of Nordic Artists and Bands that we want to bring to your attention at Nordic Music Review, and its getting longer. Sadly we cant quite give the coverage to everyone we want, and we end up frequently reminding ourselves of our ever growing backlog. But in many ways it’s a nice problem to have, and we will just keep trying to write as much as we can about music we think is genuinely good, and allow you to make up your own mind.
‘Select Captain’ have been towards the top of the list for a while now, after originally reading about them in a feature written by the very lovely and dedicated people at ‘Good Because Danish’. The alter-ego for Copenhagen based singer, songwriter and guitarist Kristian Gaarskjær, Select Captain released a debut album “The Fear and The Lights” in Autumn 2014, and have recently (well it was recent when we heard it, rather than when we got round to writing about it..) released an EP called ‘Pure Neon’.
And its this EP that we’ve been listening to most over the last month. Its acoustic based, packed full of good tunes and its fairly perfect for listening to on cheery summer nights before the nights start drawing in. ‘Morning’ is a perfect example, infectious upbeat sounding vocals, a simple but lovely piano theme in the chorus, and you’ll find yourself clapping along at the right moments, trust me. But ‘Here we Stand (and nothing ever changes)’ has a slightly different style, the lyrics have a different tone, its more reflective and melancholy, with a great guitar line that carries through the song, and again a great melody. The American influence stares right at you in ‘Adamantine’, and ‘Slow’ is now a real favourite, with a stripped back opening but developing into a simple but well constructed song.
With an album and an EP put in the last 6 months, theres plenty to catch up on from the world of Select Captain, and Kristian Gaarskjær seems to have this natural ability to produce songs with great tunes, a versatile if mainly acoustic based sound and well thought through lyrics. We hope you’ll add them to your list of new Nordic discoveries too.